tone

UK/ˈtəʊn/US/ˈtoʊn/

nounB16 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,710 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: tones, toned, toning

Tone is what a voice does with words, quite apart from the words themselves. 'Fine', said flatly after a small pause, is a different message from 'Fine!' with a smile behind it.

Colours have tones as well: two tones of blue on one wall, a warm skin tone, a room done in soft grey tones. In music a tone is a note, and also the sound a particular instrument makes, such as the tone of an old cello. Writing has a tone too, and the letter's tone was cold and legal. Machines make them: leave a message after the tone. As a verb you tone down a rude sentence to make it milder and tone up your muscles at the gym, and 'don't take that tone with me' is what a parent says when the tone is the whole problem.

Definitions of tone

1nountoneThe quality of someone's voice that shows how they feel.B1~2%
“It was not what he said, it was the tone.”
2noungeneralThe general mood or attitude of a piece of writing, a place or an occasion.B2~20%
“The email's tone was polite but very cold.”
3nounshadeA shade of a colour.B1~5%
“The walls are painted in two tones of green.”
synonyms: shade, hue
4nounmusicalA musical note, or the sound quality of an instrument or a voice.B2~61%
“The old piano has a warm, thick tone.”
5nounelectronicAn electronic sound made by a phone or a machine as a signal.B1~10%
“Leave your name and number after the tone.”
6verbmusclesTo make muscles firmer; usually 'tone up'.B2~2%
“Swimming tones your shoulders and back.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

tone is a quality of sound.

Phrases it lives in

tone down — to make something less strong or less extreme
tone-deaf — unable to hear differences in musical pitch, or badly out of touch with how others feel

Where it comes from

Tone comes from Latin tonus, 'sound, tone', which took it from Ancient Greek tonos, 'strain, tension, pitch', built on the verb teino, 'to stretch'. A tone was the tightness of a string: pull it tighter and the pitch rises. That is why tone and tune are doublets, and why a muscle tightened at the gym is described as toned.

Proto-Indo-European
*ten-
Ancient Greek
τόνος — strain, tension, pitch
Old French
ton
Latin
tonus — sound, tone
Middle English
ton
English, today
tone

Built from

τείνω · Ancient Greek — to stretch

From Middle English ton, tone, from Latin tonus (“sound, tone”) (possibly through Old French ton), from Ancient Greek τόνος (“strain, tension, pitch”), from τείνω (“to stretch”). a doublet of tune and ton and tonos and tonus.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Colours & Patterns

First appears in chapter 10 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

tone in the wild

In Western music theory, a major second (sometimes also called whole tone or a whole step) is a second spanning two semitones ().
Major second
Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, and have 24 different pitches.
Quarter tone
Quarter tones have their roots in the music of the Middle East and more specifically in Persian traditional music.
Quarter tone
In literature, the tone of a literary work expresses the writer's attitude toward or feelings about the subject matter and audience.
Tone (literature)
In addition to the four main tones, there is a neutral tone that appears on weak syllables.
Standard Chinese phonology

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the tonus family

tone

tone — used about once every 196 pages · #1,710 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of tone

1nountoneThe quality of someone's voice that shows how they feel.B1~2%

“It was not what he said, it was the tone.”

2noungeneralThe general mood or attitude of a piece of writing, a place or an occasion.B2~20%

“The email's tone was polite but very cold.”

3nounshadeA shade of a colour.B1~5%

“The walls are painted in two tones of green.”

synonyms: shade, hue

4nounmusicalA musical note, or the sound quality of an instrument or a voice.B2~61%

“The old piano has a warm, thick tone.”

5nounelectronicAn electronic sound made by a phone or a machine as a signal.B1~10%

“Leave your name and number after the tone.”

6verbmusclesTo make muscles firmer; usually 'tone up'.B2~2%

“Swimming tones your shoulders and back.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

tone is a quality of sound.